Weekend Wrap - Holiday Hangover Edition

Late to the keyboard, insufficient caffeine in my bloodstream and already on the clock.... What could go wrong?

Colonial Daze - Must have been quite the finish, but I saw exactly none of it.  Given that it's already Tuesday, I'll allow Dylan Dethier the honors from his Monday Finish column, first with the back story:

Grillo’s watery wait.

In October 2015, 23-year-old Argentine Emiliano Grillo played his first event as a PGA Tour member, the Frys.com Open.

He won.

You can only imagine what he thought at that point. Surely such a speedy first win meant more would soon follow, one after another, pouring out like Fernet con Coca at an evening barbecue.

Grillo had some close calls in the years that followed. He finished T2 at the Barclays in 2016. In 2018 he finished second at the CIMB Classic and third twice (both in Texas: the Fort Worth Invitational and the Houston Open). Last summer he got close again, finishing T2 twice in three starts in near-misses at the John Deere Classic and 3M Open.

Being a non-designated event was always going to have a surreal aspect, but I didn't have this on my bingo card:

How agonizing it must have been, then, for Grillo to carry a two-shot lead to the 18th tee on Sunday at the Charles Schwab Challenge only to extend his wait even longer. In what was one of the strangest sights we can remember seeing in a sport defined by them, Grillo blocked his tee shot out to the right only to find his ball had rolled into a cement drain, where a shallow stream of water carried it little by little in the wrong direction. He’d waited eight years to get back to the winner’s circle. Now he waited another eight minutes as the ball just refused to stop floating; there’s no doubt he was processing the implosion-in-progress in real time.

I've long said that the most exciting thing in our game is seeing what a ball does after contact with the ground, though not completely sure this qualifies....

Grillo eventually took a drop on some cement and went on to make double bogey to post a clubhouse lead of eight under par. Then came more waiting as Adam Schenk — also at eight under — played the 18th.

My defining prediction of the LIV mess was that it would cause us to hate them all.  I have a carve-out:

.@GrilloEmiliano invited two young fans to hit some shots during his playoff prep 🥰 @CSChallengeFW pic.twitter.com/3PTl4V1YoD

— Golf on CBS ⛳ (@GolfonCBS) May 28, 2023

He explains:

Grillo retreated to the practice tee. And here came what looked to the outside world like a moment of goodwill but something he called his “trick”: he invited a couple youngsters out to hit balls with him.

“I guess it was a little bit of a trick to get my head out of the situation,” he said. “José Cóceres did it with me when I was 7, 8 years old, and that was the greatest experience of all, just watching him and hitting his clubs. I kind of got to do it with them, and hopefully they’ll remember that.

I guess some would consider that a =n admission against interest, but it bothers me not at all.  The beauty in it is his "hope" that the kids will remember it, but it's that connective tissue back to Jose Cóceres that I love so much.  He still treasures that experience, and he repaid it in kind.  I'm guessing the kids will not only remember it, but also use it to pass on when they are in a position to do so.  Good stuff.

Just before we move on, Dylan typically finishes his feature with a look towards the week ahead, including this bit of new vernacular:

1. Designated Szn returns.

This week’s Memorial kicks off a run of three Dezzies in four weeks; the RBC Canadian Open comes next week before the U.S. Open and the Travelers. Rory McIlroy headlines the group expected to play all four events and most top Tour pros will play at least three. This is the heart of the jam-packed summer season. Drink it in!

Dezzies?  Just when you thought our language couldn't be further degraded....  

Your Fifteen Minutes Are Up -We knew Michael Block would crash and burn, but his descent from hero to zero has established a new land speed record.  That the Tour Confidential panel devoted two questions to him will puzzle future generations:

The world’s favorite club pro, Michael Block, was the talk of the PGA Championship, but he didn’t fare as well this past week, when he received a sponsor’s exemption into the

Charles Schwab Challenge and finished in last place (81-74). Are you surprised he struggled as much as he did? And how much blame could be put on mental fatigue after a taxing 10 or so days?

Josh Sens: Anything other than a letdown would have been surprising, given the altitude he’d been flying at. Block is obviously a fine player, but something cosmic was at work at Oak Hill last week. The beauty of it was that he recognized it as it was happening. He knew how rare it was, and that it wasn’t likely to repeat.

Jessica Marksbury: Not surprised. We know that major weeks are a grind like no other for the guys in contention, and Block arguably received more attention than the winner, Brooks Koepka. He earned it, but it takes a while to adjust to that kind of constant adulation. The brain drain must be immense. I’m glad he bounced back with a more respectable second round at Colonial, and I expect we’ll see a much more refreshed — and prepared — Block at the upcoming RBC Canadian Open.

Sean Zak: The 81 was pretty stunning, but life and golf comes at you fast. Block didn’t do himself any favors playing just one practice round and doing dozens of interviews in the lead up. But I also don’t blame him. Every second since we’ve gotten to know him he has acknowledged that he knew this would be the best time of his golfing life. So why not do exactly what you want to do?

Did they not know he's a club pro?   

Block also caught some criticism for comments he said on Bob Menery’s podcast. “What I would shoot from where Rory hits it would be stupid,” he said. “I think I’d be one of the

best players in the world. Hands down. … My iron game, wedge game, around the greens and my putting is world class.” Was it fair to catch heat for this one?

Sens: Ha. Yeah. And if were 7-foot-4, I’d rule the paint. Sure, the comment came off as a bit tone-deaf, but even as he was being hailed as a man of the people last week, you could tell Block had some jock swagger to him. And that’s how jocks talk. More power to him for being confident in himself. If I were a buddy of his, I’d give him grief over beers about his cockiness. That’s what’s called for. A friendly ribbing. Not any kind of harsh rebuke.

Marksbury: It was a little off-putting, especially because the golf world initially embraced him for his charming humility and everyman-relatability. This arrogance of this comment is pretty extreme. But I’m inclined to agree with Josh, and give him a pass. He was clearly riding high off the PGA performance, and found it hard to suppress those alpha vibes.

Zak: I don’t care at all. Why? Because what golfer has ever played the best golf of their life and not gotten a little over-confident? You and me included! Unlike most people, I listened to the entire 30-minute interview, in which Menery did as many radio hosts do: he coaxed some cockiness out of Block. And it resulted in 30 seconds shared ‘round the world. The other 29:30 show Block as we always knew him: gracious, humble, etc.

It was hubristic and completely fair for him to draw heat for it.  What's more curious, though, is that the heat lingered for so long.... Though for all that heat, hasn't the lede been buried.  Of course he's crazy about his assessment of his own short-game skills, but what might this comment tell us about Rory's short-game skills?   

The NCAAs, Patriarchy Division - We have a champion, and said champion has a dilemma:

Fred Biondi hoped he would have a decision to make Monday afternoon. One that would have major implications for his future.

Would he turn professional, which had been his plan all along, or would he remain an amateur for nearly another year.

The caveat? A Masters invitation on the line that would require him to stay an amateur until the 2024 event.

Well, Biondi now has that decision to make.

The senior at Florida came from five shots behind in the final round of stroke play Monday at the 2023 NCAA Men’s Golf Championship to win the individual title. Biondi shot 3-under 67 at Grayhawk Golf Club’s Raptor Course, surpassing Georgia Tech senior Ross Steelman late after the latter bogeyed his final three holes in a closing 3-over 73.

If you watch any of the men's NCAAs, you'll hear talk of PGA Tour U, an attempt to reward the kids for staying in school:

When Florida senior Fred Biondi rolled in his final putt to secure the NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship on Monday, Georgia Tech’s Ross Steelman stood in the shade of a video board and sportingly clapped for the winner. Inside, Steelman must have been feeling a heavy churn of emotions. Yes, he’d lost the individual title to a golfer who trailed him by five shots at the beginning of the round at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. But in many ways, Steelman had truly climbed to a higher peak.

With his tie for second, the Missouri native jumped from No. 6 to No. 4 in the PGA Tour University rankings, and that could have an enormous impact in the early stages of his professional career.

Texas Tech’s Ludvig Aberg already had the PGA Tour U title wrapped up before the NCAAs began, and he officially finished atop the final rankings on Monday night. With the accomplishment, the Swede becomes the first PGA Tour U No. 1 to earn fully exempt status on the PGA Tour, beginning this year and extending through the 2024 season. The Nos. 2 through 5 finishers get some very nice perks themselves. They earned fully exempt Korn Ferry Tour membership for 2023, as well as an exemption to Final Stage of 2023 PGA Tour Q School. They also can accept unlimited PGA Tour sponsor exemptions for the remainder of 2023 all of 2024.

There's some history here that we haven't the time to review, but prior Tour policies, most notably the elimination of Q-School, forced the kids to turn professional earlier.  I haven't seen enough to judge its effectiveness, but the intention seems to be to allow the kids to finish the school year.  Will it allow them to put off the payday long enough for the U.S. Amateur in August?  That still seems a stretch... 

Hello World!, The Sequel - Let me see if I have the plot right.  A talented youngster matriculates at Stanford, dominates the college/amateur game for two years, then decides to move up a weight class.  This movie is at least seventeen years old:

Rose Zhang has penned one of the most storied amateur golf careers of all time. Now, she’s taking her talents to the next level.

Zhang announced Friday on Instagram she will forgo her final two years of college eligibility to turn professional. She’ll make her pro debut at the Mizuho Americas Open next week at Liberty National.

The 20-year-old turns pro after one of the most successful amateur careers in the history of the game. In her two years at Stanford, Zhang won 12 tournaments — breaking the Cardinal record previously held by Tiger Woods, Maverick McNealy and Patrick Rodgers — including back-to-back NCAA individual titles. She also won the U.S. Girls Junior, the U.S. Women’s Amateur and the Augusta National Women’s Amateur.

Like Tiger, she's won both the Amateur and the Junior.  Unlike Tiger, she won them in the "wrong" order,  which your humble blogger finds delightfully amusing.  

The girl will most certainly be busy this summer:

Zhang will have a busy summer ahead as she wades her way into professional golf. In addition to her start at Liberty National, Zhang will also play in the four remaining major championships (U.S. Women’s Open, KPMG Women’s PGA, Evian, AIG Women’s Open), the Dana Open, the Canadian Open and the Queen City Championship.

I have little doubt that she'll be a top player out there, just curious as to whether there will be an adjustment period.

That TC panel had this on Rose's college career:

Stanford sophomore Rose Zhang won her second straight NCAA DI Women’s Individual Championship — becoming the first woman to win multiple DI golf titles — and picked up her 12th career win in the process, breaking the school record held by Tiger Woods, Maverick McNealy and Patrick Rodgers. (Zhang has played two seasons to their three.) Now she’s set to make her pro debut at this week’s Mizuho Americas Open. While we won’t ask you to predict her future on the LPGA, we will ask you this: Where does she rank among the best collegiate golfers ever?

Sens: Where her achievement ranks, I’m not sure. But it’s the most dominant run by a college player I can think of since Ryan Moore won pretty much everything on the amateur circuit in 2004. It will be interesting to see whether she can carry over that success to professional events. Look at the names listed in the question: collegiate dominance is clearly no guarantee.

Marksbury: Remarkable. Incredible. Unprecedented in the women’s game! I can’t name someone to top her. Zhang deserves all the accolades. No doubt she’s turning pro because she ran out of things to accomplish in college. As Josh pointed out, amateur dominance doesn’t automatically translate to professional success, but something tells me that Zhang will have some serious staying power on the LPGA circuit, and it will be fun to watch.

Zak: She’s probably top 5 best college players ever? Every decade or so we see a player win 10 or more times in college, but Zhang has a major trump card with those two NCAA titles. Her career falls short of Phil Mickelson’s at ASU — 16 wins, three NCAAs — but if she hung around for another year she probably would have matched him.

Nobody will confuse me for a Phil sycophant, but if you're pimping his collegiate career, wouldn't winning a PGA Tour event while a collegiate golfer be worth noting?  

I was initially surprised that she made the announcement while the NCAA men have the stage.  But she's in the LPGA field this week, so she may simply have not had a window to announce without stealing some of the guy's thunder.

Harshing Their Mellow - Heady days for those nice folks at LIV, basking in the reflected aura of Brooksie's win at the PGA (including, as at Augusta, a total of three in the top ten).  Which would be great, though the part was broken up by the need to haul ass to D.C. to continue to grow the game.  Are these guys selfless, or what.

So, are they putting on a good show?  Full confession?  I'm drafting this early Sunday morning due to a jammed early week schedule and making no promises that I'll circle back to edit.  But if this second round leaderboard doesn't grow the game, what will?

I'm not in the least saying that the Colonial leaderboard is any better, it's just a comparison of the worst of the PGA Tour with the same-old every week LIV.  Brooksie is T16, credible coming off last week's high, and thankfully ensuring that he'll finish as low Koepka (though that category is a pretty strong tell about the depth of the LIV field).

UPDATE: Who coulda seen Mito Pereira giving up a final round lead (I kid), but HV III won the event.  Given that he won that event in Saudi, he's become quite the Wahabi darling, which I find quite amusing because.... well, you can finish that thought as easily as I can.

I'll just add that my favorite part of the LIV leaderboards are that they give us the tee times for the final round.  

UPDATE II:  This is from Dylan's column, but how does this work?

And in the LIV event, four WDs (including from Thomas Pieters, Matthew Wolff and Jason Kokrak mid-tournament) forced the three reserve players into action and even left Smash GC competing with just three golfers in the final round.

Really?  Wouldn't you be pissed if you paid a billion dollars for Smash GC and found you only have three players? 

So, remember that great playoff that DJ won.  Yanno, the one that had us citing trees falling in the forest, because the CW had cut off the broadcast.  It turns out that LIV has an app for that:

LIV Golf is headed back to YouTube.

Less than six months after signing a media rights agreement with the CW, LIV announced Friday that it has created a new, pay-per-view broadcast option to run on YouTube. The PPV broadcast will cost $3 per tournament day, LIV said in a release announcing the decision, and will run in addition to the league’s agreement with the CW.

A LIV source indicated that the CW is aware of the decision to introduce a pay-per-view model, and that the decision does not violate any of the league’s preexisting broadcast agreements. The hope for LIV is to grow off the success first seen on YouTube in 2022, where the league attracted tournament audiences of several hundred-thousand views in the U.S. and abroad. The league already has its own direct-to-consumer subscription platform, LIV Golf Plus, which the PPV channel will run counter to. LIV broadcasts will continue to be streamed for free on the CW app.

LIV channels its inner CNN+?  What could go wrong?

CNN+ was launched with a business plan that projected that 16 million (OK, I made up that number, but it was something crazy high like that) would pay them for their product, when they couldn't get one million folks to tune in for free.

Because I've been reliably informed that everything is going swimmingly:

The announcement comes on the heels of a rocky few weeks for the Saudi-backed upstarts and their first-time sports broadcast counterparts. At LIV’s last event in Tulsa, CW affiliates in many major markets dropped the league’s broadcast minutes before a three-way playoff featuring Cam Smith and Dustin Johnson began; opting instead for Sunday evening news shows or sitcom reruns. That decision came after weeks of radio silence from the CW or LIV about the league’s broadcast ratings, which had dipped some 24 percent from the season-opening broadcast in Mayakoba to the second tournament in Tucson before the two parties stopped reporting.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln....

Eamon Lynch has a typically scathing piece up, one whose predictability doesn't diminish the enjoyment:

Lynch: Brooks Koepka's major victory is being hijacked by hangers-on

 Who ya gonna skewer first, Eamon:

If Koepka was uninterested in using his PGA Championship victory as a platform for point

scoring, there was no shortage of scavengers eager to do so in his stead.

His swing instructor, Claude Harmon III, was first out of the blocks, exploiting the moment to air his grievances about those in media (chiefly Brandel Chamblee, with a drive-by caress of yours truly) whose criticisms of LIV Golf are at odds with his avaricious burrowing into the Saudi trough. Harmon has been an occasional friend for 20 years, but even his pals know he’s peerless in marketing himself on the accomplishments of others, a skill honed from the cradle. His attack featured all the whataboutery you’d expect from one more apt to flatter royalty than to inquire after those they torture. (In CH3’s defense, no one should be subjected to a Chamblee reply that is ungoverned by Twitter character limits).

I might have a thing or two more to say about Calude's rant, but what else ya got, E?

Alert to any opportunity to remind his Saudi overlords that he’s a loyal supplicant, Phil Mickelson leapt on the Brooks bandwagon and sought to portray the win not as proof of Koepka’s brilliance but as evidence of the superiority of the circuit he helped engineer. “Love LIV or hate it, it’s the best way/Tour to be your best in the majors,” he tweeted. “Enough events to keep you sharp, fresh and ready, yet not be worn down from too many tournaments or obligations. 14 LIV events, 34 weeks left open to prepare for the 4 majors. Fact.”

That Mickelson cannot distinguish between statements of fact and opinion comes as no shock since he has long since blurred the line between fact and fiction too.

I know, hard to post much of a score when the degree of difficulty is so low.....

I thought Koepka himself had it about right, and Eamon connects another dot:

“I definitely think it helps LIV, but I’m more interested in my own self right now,” he went on. “It’s a huge thing for LIV, but at the same time I’m out here competing as an individual at the PGA Championship.”

Koepka makes a poor patsy for LIV’s lickspittles. He was openly dismissive of regular PGA Tour events so the notion that he’s invested in 54-hole shotgun starts against the Andy Ogletrees of the world is fanciful. He was not a plaintiff in the Saudi-funded litigation, has chosen not to badmouth the tour he left, and has not been a particularly enthusiastic propagandist for the tour he joined. He gives the impression of a man checking the boxes required of him, nothing more.

I'm sure this will be a riveting episode of Full Swing II.

In that Monday Finish column, Dylan has a long bit on the Tweetstorm involving Phil, Brandel Chamblee and Eamon Lynch.  I'll just excerpt this opener:

PHIL LOGS ON

Lefty tweets.

Phil Mickelson had taken a break from Twitter for a while. Now? Not so much. In the past week alone Mickelson has used Twitter to sing LIV’s praises for major prep, dished on getting kicked out of CBS’s fantasy football league, came at Brandel Chamblee (several times), quoted John McEnroe, sold some gummies, blocked (and was blocked?) by Chamblee, complimented a youngster’s golf swing, offered to debate Chamblee (just not on Golf Channel), bragged about his driving distance and threw in a little shade at Eamon Lynch. One thing we know for sure: Mickelson’s paying attention!

He's got the tweets, so I'll not bother to embed them.  I find that Phil assertion that LIV is better major prep to be comically inane, given that their basic assertion is that they should be free to play wherever they choose.   Apparently, this assertion of the sanctity of free will only goes so far, because LIV requires their attendance everywhere, so were you not inclined to play the week before a major, go pound sand.

Claude Harmon's dyspeptic rant caught Brendan Porath's eye as well, and he went to the trouble to list all those that might not take well to it:

1. Brooks Koepka—The now five-time major champ is one of the LIV defectors who has made efforts not to get in squabbles with his PGA Tour contemporaries. It seems he’s largely been accepted, like DJ, and avoided using anything he does, like winning a major, as a way to win points in the LIV-PGA Tour battle. So I can’t imagine he’s thrilled with this becoming a dominant story after his win, because the headlines identify Harmon as “Brooks Koepka’s coach” before they do by the instructor’s name.

2. NBC—For obvious reasons, as they were a primary target of some of Harmon’s most incendiary accusations. As someone who likes to be on TV, Harmon’s napalming of at least one big media bridge and any prospects of working with the network seems to be an especially big unforced error.

3. Brandel Chamblee and Eamon Lynch—Whatever you think of them, Chamblee and Lynch are two voices in the game with some degree of prominence that Harmon has now chosen to make into enemies.

4. LIV Golf!—While the disruptor league and its associates may have quietly cheered on the screed, LIV has done better this year by taking a much more low-key, less directly confrontational approach in its battle with the PGA Tour. After some confusion about a snippy comment about Jay Monahan in Australia, a LIV spokesperson told Sports Illustrated that, “We are trying to avoid that kind of hostility in our press conferences.” Harmon took the opposite approach here, and anytime someone goes off like this on behalf of the league, it tends to have a counterproductive impact and put LIV under a microscope. So I’m not sure even LIV loved this becoming a high-profile story.

5. Will Zalatoris—Wow, what a drive-by by Claude on the injured Zalatoris! Harmon created unnecessary beef, but as a rip job that you didn’t see coming, it was entertaining. He also threw Max Homa into this crowned start bucket.

6. Tom Watson—Have we not dragged the old man enough for his blundering 2014 Ryder Cup captaincy? Maybe not! Because this was a new one, as Harmon told an appreciated behind-the-scenes story of Watson asking Brooks where he was a club pro at during an encounter at the 2014 PGA at Valhalla. Koepka was not yet Koepka, but he was far from an obscure club pro—Brooks had finished tied for fourth at the U.S. Open just two months earlier! This is the good stuff but Mr. Watson probably does not appreciate Harmon bringing this to light at this juncture.

Does anyone know where the Witness Protection Program is hiding Greg Norman?  Because the next place we see him will likely be on a milk carton...

That's it for today, kids.  Thanks for bearing with the schedule, but I'll see you next on Thursday.